“Yes I agree, due to the dwindling numbers of tigers in the wild & those that are legally shot for pleasure; there aren’t many left in the wild; BUT there are some decent wildlife parks that tigers can be kept in, whilst following the proper gene protocol etc.. But to say they are better in a circus is too much for me to swallow!!! As an animal advocate of many years, I don’t think tigers are or should be allowed in CIRCUSES.” To say tigers are trained without the use of brute force or cruelty is something I can not accept, i.e jumping through rings of fire!!! Please read the following report on why this person thinks tigers are better off in zoos, someone who is an animal welfare specialist!!! PLEASE READ THIS POST…FOR ME ME IT STANDS AGAINST EVERYTHING I BELIEVE AS AN ANIMAL ADVOCATE.”

“PLEASE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT AGAINST WILD ANIMALS IN CIRCUSES BY LIKING THIS POST…Thanks!

I recently went to visit a family who are being attacked. They are hard-working and do not live off state benefits despite being anything but wealthy.

They are a part of a minority community that has been subject to venomous attacks for many years by people who are never called to account. In many ways the prejudices that they suffer are amongst the last socially acceptable, thoughtless bigotries it is possible to openly express.

The family I went to visit was a circus family, from Peter Jolly’s circus, the first in Great Britain to be licensed by Defra to have and exhibit big cats. It is a traditional circus maintaining a 300-year-old tradition of showing performing animals to adoring crowds. The family live and work every minute of every day with their animals, which, as a result are in the condition one would expect of pedigree show cattle.

They are physically healthy and mentally stimulated from the constant contact with their trainers.What is odd is that the animal rights lobby has been so successful in persuading a nation of animal lovers that these animals should be in the wild, and that both captivity and being asked to perform are acts of cruelty.

On September 3, Jim Fitzpatrick MP introduced a private member’s bill calling for all wild animals in circuses to be banned.

The committee’s report recommended the Government should not consider a banning wild animals in circuses but should allow the current licensing system to regulate the activity. This was because the committee found that there were no welfare implications to wild animals being kept captive or performing in circuses. This may surprise many people who are used to hearing the opposite in public, but it doesn’t surprise me. I have seen the conditions that these animals are kept in and the condition of the animals for myself.

If you are against animals in circuses, or have no particular view about them, I would invite you to consider a couple of points.

Take tigers. In the past century we have lost 97 per cent of wild tigers on this planet. There are essentially two reasons for this. Tigers are an apex predator that require a large area of land to survive in the wild. Man has encroached on that land and man is not good at sharing. Worse still, for the tigers, man has decided that their component parts are far more valuable after their death than when they are alive. The reality is that there is not so much wild for them to be in anymore and many people willing to go into the wild to shoot them and sell them on the black market.

The reality is that we cannot turn the clock back. The task of providing a habitat and preventing poaching is simply not one we can complete before tigers become extinct if all tigers were to remain in the wild. This is an appalling reality but it is a reality nonetheless. “Exactly…but they shouldn’t be subjected to training tactics, to entertain the public either”

So we are left with the unavoidable conclusion that some tigers must be kept in captivity, despite how much this offends some people’s aesthetic sensibilities.

Of course we can and should keep tigers in zoos and safari parks. These are both places where the animals are safe and can be studied from a distance. They also, however, have an inherent disadvantage. Tigers in zoos and safari parks do not enjoy the level of mental stimulation they would in the wild, largely because it would be frowned upon to allow them to hunt the other residents. It is for this reason that safari parks came into being in the first place.

People wanted to display animals in settings that more closely resembled the wild than traditional zoos, and where the animals had more to keep them occupied.

Ironically they turned to circus people, who assisted in designing the first safari parks in order to minimise the boredom that can be experienced by animals in captivity.

Tigers in a modern circus, on the other hand, have a great deal of mental stimulation, which comes in the form of the training it takes in order for them to perform. The suggestion that cruelty is employed in this training simply isn’t true. If you were to train a tiger by beating it you would end up with an animal whose only act would be cowering in fear. As anyone who has ever tried to train a dog knows, you may be able to stop an animal from doing something by scaring it but you can’t encourage an animal to do something in the same way.

Tricks that tigers do in a circus may be characterised as “undignified” or “demeaning” but the tiger has no understanding of such concepts. To the tiger, the training is fundamentally similar to the play that it would undertake in the wild and prevents boredom and depression that simply locking it in a cage risks. “Oh Please, there is more that enough undercover investigations to prove this wrong…on all levels”

More than this, however, the circus brings the tiger into contact with humans in an entirely positive way. The tiger makes money while it is alive, rather than only having a value in death. It was a quaint hippy concept from the 1960s that money doesn’t matter and everyone should be free, but real life doesn’t work that way. Conserving tigers is a costly business.

In circuses tigers can contribute to this effort. The truth is we have been working alongside animals for millennia. There is nothing wrong with that as long as welfare standards are as good as they can and should be.

In this country we have the highest welfare standards in the world.”Really??? is that why Britain is the last Country to ban wild animals in circuses?“

We need to continue to set an example through the way we maintain those standards, not restrict the areas that good practice can occur in.

Clearly there have been examples of animals being mistreated in the past. This occurs in every walk of life from circuses to our own homes.

The law is entirely adequate to deal with abuse. If someone abuses an animal they should be prosecuted. But banning animals being kept in circuses because some people have mistreated animals is like banning cars because some people crash.

In the US, the Ringling Brothers circus is a multi-billion dollar industry. It grew out of traditional UK circuses and still employs many British performers.

It is an industry that ploughs a fortune into animal conservation. The company owns huge facilities where retired circus animals are kept in fantastic conditions. It is an example of the contribution that private industry can make to the conservation effort and it is an example we should follow, not shy away from.

Currently the animal rights lobby is attacking circuses, and zoos, safari parks, farms, race tracks and abattoirs. The same argument is used to object to all of them. “Sorry I disagree, different living accommodations & racing young horses has nothing to do with zoo life!”

A tiger that lives free in the wild in the way they advocate has an average life span of 15 years. In captivity the average is 25 years, but many go on to 30 years or more. Next time you think about circuses ask yourself if you know the whole truth, or if you have really thought about it at all.

What the legislation says

According to the gov.uk website, anyone in England operating a travelling circus with wild animals must still apply for, and receive, a licence under the Welfare of Wild Animals in Travelling Circuses (England) Regulations 2012. These ensure that if a travelling circus continues to use wild animals before a ban can take effect, they will be subject to regular inspections to check they are meeting strict licensing conditions and welfare standards. The regulations are made under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. This act includes the duty of care that applies to owners of animals as well as the offence making it illegal to cause an animal to suffer unnecessarily.” As far as I am aware, Circuses are licensed by their own staff!!”

The RSPCA is campaigning against the use of wild animals in circuses and is lobbying the Westminster and Welsh governments to ban their use in England and Wales. The organisation says: “We don’t believe animals should be subjected to the conditions of circus life. Regular transport, cramped and bare temporary housing, forced training and performance, loud noises and crowds of people are often unavoidable realities for the animals. Scientific research has shown that travelling circus life is likely to have a harmful effect on animal welfare.

Behind the big top

Philip Astley is credited with being the ‘father’ of the modern circus when he opened the first circus in London on April 4, 1768

The word circus derives from the Latin circus, which is the romanisation of the Greek kirkos, which itself derives from Homeric Greek krikos, meaning ‘circle’ or ‘ring’

In 1825 Joshuah Purdy Brown was the first circus owner to use a large canvas tent for the circus performance

In 1919, Lenin expressed a wish for the circus to become ‘the people’s art-form’, with facilities and status on a par with theatre, opera and ballet. Russia later nationalised its circuses

A 2011 Defra consultation saw 94 per cent of respondents, including the British Veterinary Association, backing an end to the use of wild animals in circuses

Keeping wild animals in circuses is to be banned in England from the end of 2015

Attendances for the three travelling circuses using wild animals in 2011 were approximately 153,000

The videos are proof of cruelty. These creatures were beaten. Actual fact. Nothing to do with “animal rights lunatics.” It doesn’t matter who made the video. It DID happen. You surely don’t deny this cruelty happened, do you?

Did they not lose the case because of their extreme stupidity with not using a credible witness, not anything to do with the cruelty shown on the video. That still is factual isn’t? We can’t deny elephants getting beaten across the face before they go out to perform tricks can we?. It is there in the video. And also the tigers getting whipped is still factual, don’t you think?

Peta lost their case, HSUS lost their case, Aspca lost their case, the list of Vegan front organisations on the hook for legal fees is unending. Try googling Peta loses court case. It will keep you reading for a week. Vegan racketeering is expensive in thenStates apparently.

@equaliser, I genuinely cannot find anything that says Peta had to pay feld. I would honestly be interested if you could send me a link, it would be interesting. The link you sent me named other groups, but not Peta. Are they as one? As I said I am genuinely interested.

Is the abuse not there to see. The camera never lies now does it? What do you think of these people who beat the elephants? It is irrelevant regarding the paid witness, ( although reckless and bloody idiotic) because the abuse of these animal took place. Surely you can’t deny that? What about the gentleman who wrote the article who said and I quote “The suggestion that cruelty is employed in this training simply isn’t true.” (re tigers) there is another link I posted proving they do get beat. You can’t argue with video evidence. So in summery two questions Did Elephants repeatedly get beaten just before they went out to “perform” ? and is the other video proof that tigers are also whipped and beaten so they will “perform.”?

Oh yes and the lovely Ringling Brothers “Feld Entertainment, the parent company of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, must now pay the largest settlement of its kind in U.S. history―*270,000―for violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) dating back to 2007” http://tinyurl.com/pl9fd7w

Oh yes no one in circuses ever beats the tigers. Are you sure? https://http://tinyurl.com/qe5fsmc That is just one of many you can google if you would like to look. These beautiful animal are not here to perform tricks for us humans.

“So why does the writer not take the above into consideration? I completely agree with the RSPCA & Scientific research; which is why wild animals should be banned from circuses…PERIOD. I presume this writer knows about the lawsuits & what Ringling have paid in the past due to poor conditions etc. “SERIOUSLY, DOES THIS GUY EXPECT US TO BELIEVE TIGERS ENTERTAIN… BECAUSE THEY ENJOY IT?? IT STIMULATE THEIR MINDS ETC…..I don’t think so…do you???

PETA has been after the USDA all this time to take action against Ringling for abusing the animals in its care. In recent meetings, we presented unequivocal evidence of animal abuse, including beatings, the death of a lion, lame elephants forced to perform despite chronic pain, and a baby elephant who died during a training routine. We had recently filed a new formal request for action against Ringling, and our attorneys had met with the USDA’s general counsel and urged her to begin enforcement proceedings.

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ABOUT THESE POSTS

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